


Art and Monsters

by rude_not_ginger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 16:38:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4753403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art is a series of lines, paint, and history.  For the first time, Sherlock Holmes is recognizing the imagery behind it, and how that relates to two monsters that have touched on his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Art and Monsters

_"You are each the other's own personal monster,_  
_and you let yourselves both off the leash."_  
-“Old World Gods”, Ashe Vernon

There are base pleasures that Sherlock Holmes seeks out.

Music. The stringing together of notes to create a harmony---it’s soothing, and he has sought out new music, gone to concerts, and written his own melodies, when the mood strikes him. It’s simple, but promotes intelligent thought, or no thought at all, if that’s what he prefers.

Clothing. He purchases the best. Soft, comfortable silks, smooth cottons, wools, and expensive but comfortable shoes. He buys clothing that lasts, but wears well. He indulges himself in order to look and feel good. It also helps to stand out. It sets him apart.

Books. He reads voraciously. Science, modern technique, law. He studies because it keeps his mind sharp. He even reads crime novels, but that’s mostly because it’s _hilarious._

One thing that Sherlock has never appreciated, however, is _art_.

He understands some of the masters, understands the concepts of paintings and how to judge forgeries and the different styles of years, because these are all _useful_ points in artwork. 

What he can’t understand is how people state that art makes them _feel_. The concept of feeling something over brushstrokes and color is absurd. It’s not like the scientifically-proven frisson behind music. It’s not like the conceptual intellectual stimulation behind words on a page. It’s just an image.

He sees images others consider haunting every day. Images of death, violence, torture. He sees them, and understands them for what they are. He sees art and understands it for what it is: A sculpture, a painting, or a photograph. Brushstrokes or chisel marks can’t affect him. He can see the way that the artist’s hand moved, he can see where the paint came from. He can see where the painting has been every day for weeks or years. The image can’t affect him.

Shouldn’t affect him.

It shouldn’t affect him.

But he’s there. He’s standing in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, looking over the body of a man, disemboweled and displayed in the center of a circle of paintings and he feels… something. Something in his chest. It bristles and bubbles up and he feels slightly sick.

It’s not the corpse, of course. No, no, that’s an interesting mystery on its own. Murders can, of course, be their own works of “art”, as they are. Twisted sculptures of mystery and intrigue, always fascinating to unravel, and wondrous in the way they call for Sherlock’s participation. This murder, the third museum murder of its kind, is intriguing in its own right, but it suddenly takes second stage.

This time, his eyes are on the painting.

The painting. Brushstrokes on canvas, colors swirled and cracked and maintained over time. He can see where it’s been processed and shipped and altered over time, but the deductions fade away into the image. The image, the _art_ , comes to the forefront.

Two men, battling. One has his knee in the other’s back, and his mouth on the man’s throat. It might almost be an embrace, if the violence weren’t so obvious in the musculature of the men. Demons fly behind them, but the light is on the fighting men, on the one with reddish hair gripping the other, and the one with dark hair being bitten, his eyes closed almost in rapture.

“What is this?” Sherlock asks the police behind him, gesturing to the image.

The detective, who had been talking to Sherlock about the case, stops and glances up.

“ _Dante and Virgil in Hell_ ,” the detective says. “Bouguereau. 1850. Does it matter?”

It doesn’t, Sherlock thinks. The paintings aren’t what the murderer here cared about. His body was a piece of art and simply belonged amongst them, that’s why it was facing the audience. No, no, it doesn’t matter.

He hears himself speak. “Yes,” he says. A pause. “It might.”

He can’t help but feel the lie there. No, the painting is irrelevant. It’s irrelevant, but he still keeps staring at it. At the way the biting man’s hand grips the dark-haired man’s thigh. The violence in it.

“It does. I’ll take it with me.”

There’s silence.

“Take… _Dante and Virgil in Hell_ with you?” the detective asks.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “Problem?”

It is, it appears, not possible to take a priceless painting to one’s flat in London. Instead, he is given a print of it, and the print is placed by the mirror over his fireplace, along with the notes from the murders.

He can tell the angle and the type of camera used to take the print, but it doesn’t diminish the feeling he gets, looking at it. The odd...sentimental feeling.

The two men in the painting, he learns from research, are from the story of Dante’s Inferno. It is the battle between Capocchio, a heretic and alchemist, and Gianni Schicchi who had usurped the identity of a dead man in order to fraudulently claim his inheritance. He turns away from the computer multiple times, reminding himself that this is irrelevant. An irrelevant painting. The murder, the corpse, the sculpture, that’s what matters.

So why is it he can almost feel the sensual violence of Capocchio? Why does the way that Schicchi bites his neck seem…appealing? Can art really make a violent battle between rivals into an embrace?

He thinks about the painting when he makes his tea. Turns his spoon in his saucer and drops two sugars into the steaming liquid.

The next corpse is deposited in Naples. Museo di Capodimonte. A head and feet twisted together around wrought-iron roses in front of several Renaissance-era paintings.

His eyes drift up, and he sees a woman in the painting near the corpse. In blue, her eyes down and her dark red lips pursed in concentration as she holds a man down indelicately, severing his head from his shoulders. Her face is cold, concentrating entirely on her task. The man dying, for his part, is twisted in complete agony, eyes rolled up to the heavens, struggling feebly against this woman with complete control over the end of his life.

“ _Judith Slaying Holofernes_ ,” the detective says, noticing Sherlock’s pause. “Gentileschi in 1611. I’m afraid you can’t take that one with you either, if it’s relevant.”

Sherlock knows this tale. He read over the Old Testament in the Bible once, as it was relevant to a case. Judith used her beauty and wits to seduce the general Holofernes, and once he trusted her, she decapitated him to save the Israelites. Sherlock deleted most of the irrelevant parts of the Bible, but saved the interesting murders, in case a fanatic used them in later cases.

He can see the decapitation in this painting, though. Not fanatical, as Sherlock had originally imagined it would be. Determined. Calculated. She doesn’t feel pity over destroying him. He doesn’t feel regret being there, for being seduced, only that now he can’t stop her.

Ridiculous. They’re paintings. Strokes of color on canvas. They don’t feel things, not like people do. No, that’s idiotic. He turns his attention back to the corpse.

A real murder, here. Not some imaginary slices of a story that have caught his eye. He needs to focus.

A print of the painting goes up next to the other over his fireplace. Sherlock stares at the woman in the painting, her hand gripping Holofernes by the hair. Violence again, cruelty again, and yet with a coldness that Sherlock finds---stirring? Something aggravatingly abnormal. Not conducive to good detective work.

Sherlock’s hand slides up to his throat. Holofernes’ mouth is twisted in defeat and terror. The woman kills him, and Sherlock imagines that some part of Holofernes appreciates the death. Appreciates being held by the woman he adored, even as she destroyed him.

The painting sits behind his eyes as he sleeps. Cappochio and Holofernes bubble under his skin when he wakes up. Sherlock can’t think how distracted he will be if another painting at another murder site catches his eye.

There is no other murder. Sherlock finds a clue, hidden under one of the fingernails of the last victim, which leads them to an art enthusiast, traveling over Europe. He is caught. The case is closed. No one else has to die, which is a win.

The paintings weren’t part of the murders, the man confesses. He just belonged with the greats. Of course he did.

Sherlock peels the copies of case reports and photographs off of the mantle. As he does every time a case ends. He cleans them up, pins them together, and places them in a folder to store in case he needs them.

His hands hover over the paintings, still pinned over the mantle. The heretic embraced and destroyed by his enemy. The naïve and lonely man brought down by the woman he loved.

Something tightens in Sherlock’s chest at the images again, at the thought of locking them away, of never looking at them again. But, he reminds himself, he is not a man for base pleasures. And art, well, art is just that. It’s _base_. Distracting. Diverting. Irrelevant.

He pulls the prints from the mantle and tosses them in the bin. Stares at them there, curled and helpless, off and on all day. Catches a glimpse of the handsome demon Schicchi, or the twist of the red lip of Judith, beckoning him.

In the morning, Mrs. Hudson takes them out with the rest of the rubbish. 

By the afternoon, he stands by the mantle with his violin, and a short series of notes comes riding out. Something low and dark, of demons and murderers, and new feelings that can’t be expressed. It’s simple, but promotes intelligent thought, or no thought at all.

In this moment, that’s what he prefers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Lyrangalia for the prompt!


End file.
